Washington, Feb 17 - Using the data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have discovered a jet from a very distant supermassive black hole being illuminated by the oldest light in the universe.

The discovery shows that black holes with powerful jets may be more common than previously thought in the first few billion years after the Big Bang.

The light detected from this jet was emitted when the universe was only 2.7 billion years old, a fifth of its present age.

At this point, the intensity of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) left over from the Big Bang was much greater than it is today.

Los Angeles, Feb 17 - This year's Oscar statuettes will look a little bit different with a new manufacturer for the first time in 34 years, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced on Tuesday.

The Academy announced that Polich Tallix Fine Art Foundry, based in Rock Tavern, New York, will exclusively create its iconic Oscar statuettes, starting with the 88th Academy Awards, Xinhua reported.

Since 1982, the statuettes have been made by Chicago-based R. S. Owens & Co. According to the Academy, the switch will take the statuette back to its "roots", being hand-cast in bronze before receiving its 24-karat gold finish.

Washington: A 55-year-old Indian man, who was on a visit to the US to attend his daughter's marriage, went missing after the wedding reception.

Prasad Moparti, from Hyderabad, had been in the US since January and was scheduled to return to India on February 26.

He was attending his daughter Durga Moparti's wedding at Grand Island Mansion in Walnut Grove in Northern California on Saturday when he walked away at about 4 pm and never returned, said Tony Turnbull, spokesman for the Sacramento County Sheriff`s Department.

"I believe that he was just walking and he fell unconscious, and he just tripped or something like that, but I'm really not sure what happened, and this seems like a total mystery," Durga, 29, said.

Washington: The Obama Administration's decision to sell eight F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan should not be a cause of concern for India as the regional security situation was taken into account at the time of sale, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.

"We think this is a capability that will help Pakistan in its counterterrorism effort and we think that's in the national security interests of the United States," Cook said responding to questions on India's disappointment over sale of eight F-16s to Pakistan.

New York - In order to provide a better engagement measurement to video creators and marketers, social networking giant Facebook's photo and video-sharing app Instagram has announced to launch a video view count feature.

"Companies like Gold's Gym used Boomerang to make muscles flex, Universal Pictures Home Entertainment ran a Marquee ad showing three videos throughout the day promoting its release of 'Furious 7', and small business 'Out of Print' ran a stop motion video ad to drive holiday sales," said a blog post.

The new feature, which will be rolled out in "the coming weeks", will give creators a tally of the impressions a video has received, whereas likes could be viewed as an engagement metric, VentureBeat reported.

Researchers from American College of Physicians have found that the gain incentive was no more effective than control. In comparison, a loss incentive resulted in a 50 percent relative increase in the mean proportion of time participants achieved their physical activity goals.

Researchers found that financial incentives for promoting daily physical activity goals are most effective when the award can be lost. This implies that the threat of having an award taken away is more effective than not earning one in the first place.

New York - Google's ambitious project to deliver internet to remote parts of the world using high-flying balloons has survived a brutal development phase and will enter the testing mode later this year, media reported on Tuesday.

With "Project Loon", the internet giant struggled to find the right balloon design that could be both inexpensive and durable not only to float but navigate to predictably travel through the stratosphere, tech website Re/Code reported.

"We busted a lot of balloons," Astro Teller, head of Alphabet's X unit (formerly Google X), was quoted as saying while showing off some of the designs at the annual TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference, which kicked off in Vancouver, Canada, on Monday.

Washington - US President Barack Obama has started a meeting with leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) countries, looking to deepen what he called a "strong and enduring partnership", the media reported on Tuesday.

During the opening session of the summit in Rancho Mirage, in Sunnylands, California, on Monday, Obama stressed his "personal commitment" to build a "strong and long-lasting" alliance in the region.

Leaders of the 10 -- Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam -- Asean countries are attending the sumit, the first summit between the US and Asean held on the American soilEFE news reported.

The US is now the largest investor in Asean and its fourth largest trading partner.

Los Angeles: From Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga to Demi Lovato and Bella Hadid, female stars raised the hotness quotient at the 58th Grammys with long slit dresses in shades of red and pink, which was otherwise dominated by safe black-and-white ensembles.

Swift went bold with a two-piece dress, combining an orange bandeu with pink skirt, marked by a high slit. In a striking similarity to Swift's outfit was singer Kimberly Schlapman's red-and-pink off-shoulder long gown.

Gaga, who went modest with her ensemble at Golden Globes, seemed to have gone back to her old flamboyant ways with a deep blue, bejeweled dress that slit up to her thigh. The look was highlighted by her flaming reddish- orange hair.

Los Angeles - Adele's performance on her song 'All I Ask' at the Grammy Awards was a little off-colour and angry fans took to Twitter to blame sound issues at the stage.

The 27-year-old singer, dressed in a floor-length red gown, took the stage to perform her song 'All I Ask' from her album 25 but there seemed a glitch in the sound. While the fans praised Adele's performance, they put the blame on sound problems.

"Some sound guy's getting fired," tweeted an user. "All of the sound guys in the building better be fired immediately. #adele #Grammys2016," said another. "The sound guy just messed up the sound during Adele's performance so everyone get your damn pitchforks," a fan wrote.

Washington, Feb. 16 : The United States and Pakistan will hold the sixth ministerial level strategic dialogue in Washigton D. C on Feb 29.

Advisor to the Pakistan Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz and United States Secretary of State John Kerry will lead their sides at these talks.

The dialogue process began in 2010 and the two countries held three ministerial meetings but the process was interrupted in 2011 when a US midnight raid in Abbottabad killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Washington D. C, Feb. 16 : Nearly 50 civilians has been killed in missile strikes on hospitals and two schools in northern Syria on Monday, the United Nations said, deepening the country's humanitarian crisis despite plans for a temporary cease-fire later this week.

The hospital airstrikes came a day after US President Barack Obama urged Moscow to halt its bombing campaign, illustrating the lack of leverage western powers have over peace negotiations aimed at ending a war that has killed nearly a third of a million people, reports Washington Post.

Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian President, made a televised address on Monday saying that any ceasefire did not mean each side had to stop using weapons.

New York - US-based technology giant Microsoft has launched a new image recognition app that looks at photos of dogs to identify its breed or at least tell the percentage of the closest match in case it cannot make an exact match.

Fetch -- an iPhone app -- is the latest in a series of fun projects that are meant to highlight machine learning's potential.

Los Angeles - Leonardo DiCaprio says shooting 'The Revenant' was colder than being submerged in icy waters in the final scenes of 'Titanic'.

DiCaprio won the best actor Bafta award while the film bagged four other trophies at the ceremony last night.

The actor and the crew of the Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's film had a tough time capturing the survival drama in harsh weather conditions as the director insisted on shooting only in natural light.

DiCaprio, 41, however, does not regret the discomforts of playing Hugh Glass, a role that saw him sleeping in a horse carcass and eating raw bison liver, as he feels they have a great movie to show at the end of it, reported People magazine.

Washington D. C., Feb. 15 : A day after Russia said that relations between Moscow and Washington were sinking fast, US President Barack Obama urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop the air raids against Syrian opposition forces during a phone call.

According the CNN, the White House said that Obama stressed on the "the importance of rapidly implementing humanitarian access to besieged areas of Syria and initiating a nationwide cessation of hostilities."

"President Obama emphasized the importance now of Russia playing a constructive role by ceasing its air campaign against moderate opposition forces in Syria," the White House said in a statement.

Washington D.C, Feb 14 - A new research suggests that dark matter scientists are on the brink of discovering the elusive particles.

Researchers are using analysis of deep space observations together with experiments far underground to hunt for dark matter, an elusive material which, together with dark energy, is thought to account for about 95 per cent of the universe.

Scientists will tell a public symposium in Washington, DC how current theories and experiment point to the existence of dark matter, but how it is little understood by scientists.

Its discovery would be a fundamental development in understanding the physical universe, a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) will hear.

Washington : Cuba has returned a dummy US Hellfire missile that was mistakenly shipped there from Europe in 2014, American and Cuban officials have said.

The Hellfire is a laser-guided, air-to-surface missile that weighs about 45 kilogrammes. Manufactured by Lockheed Martin, it can be deployed from an attack helicopter like the Apache or an unmanned drone like the Predator.

The weapon returned by Cuba was an inert training missile that was inadvertently sent to the island from Europe, where it was used in a NATO training exercise.

Washington - Silicon Valley has a significantly higher number of foreign-born employees with nearly three fourth of the workers in the field of computer and mathematics non-US citizens, a new report has said.

Thirty-seven percent of tech hub's population are non-US citizens who entered the country to fill a specific job in the tech industry, compare that to California's 27 percent of the population that is from another country and a 13 percent national average, according to the annual report of the Joint Venture Silicon Valley.

This population share increases to 50 percent for the employed, core working age population (ages 25-44), and even higher for certain occupational groups.

Washington - Nine years after he announced his decision to run for the highest office in the country, US President Barack Obama today said that the politics of the country has become worse, but he is still hopeful.

"I will be the first to admit that the tone of our politics hasn't gotten better, but worse," Obama said in his weekly radio and web address to the nation from Illinois State Senate where he had announced his presidential bid nine years ago with the message of hope.

"Too many people feel like the system is rigged, and their voices don't matter. And when good people are pushed away from participating in our public life, more powerful and extreme voices will fill the void," he said.